Where Miss Snark vented her wrath on the hapless world of writers and crushed them to sand beneath her T.Rexual heels of stiletto snark. The blog is dark--no further updates after 5/20/2007.

7.31.2005

What did you pay for Harry Potter?

Grandmother Snark is poking me with her parasol for asking what someone paid for something, but I ask for a reason.

I prevailed upon a young friend (cash and control of the remote was involved) to let me read her HP6 this Sunday. I noticed the retail price was $29.99. I also noticed it broke my toe when I dropped it after falling asleep on page 47 so I assume the thing wasn't cheap to ship.

Retail price doesn't mean much these days. I wonder what the price really was for people who coughed up cash. Dig out those receipts! Let me know!

16 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Miss Snark,Yawn, Harry Potter. The Indy Bookstore that I manage sold Harry Potter at full price. And to those loyal customers who bought specifically from us even though the chain in town and the other big box nearby was practically giving it away, we presented them a $5.00 Gift Certificate at the time of purchase as a thank you.There was some discussion about this among management about this decision. Your response?

I paid $17 and change at BandN. I reserved a copy but discovered that was irrelevant. There were copies for all. I later realized I could have paind $15 across the street at BJs (a Northeast regional equivalent of Costco), but my kids wouldn't have made out with free posters, Harry potter glasses and wristbands with 7-16-05 on them. I feel twinges of guilt about my lack of indy bookstore patronage. Should I feel guilt about BandN because of Amazon? (somewhat off-topic: some of these indy bookstores are a bit querky. Does the legendary Odyssey bookstore in South Hadley, Mass. still organize its books by publisher? Not conducive to browsing on a topic, yet unlike BandN they would run an account on you simply on your name and address and a handshake.)

Pretty ghastly. Actually, it would be nice if the independents could make a bit of money from this, so they can survive and actually stock some good books, but all the big box chain stores and supermarkets are using it as a loss leader, so I guess to hell with them.

Far too much, as I was in the airport the day after it came out and was desperate to read it on the plane. So I ended up paying over 20 US dollars, as everything is so expensive in airports.And then when I got home I discovered that my parents had bought one for me as a welcome-home present. Oops.

(actually, The Tour Manager pre-ordered through Buy.com at a discount, but it didn't arrive on release date as promised, so we ponied up full price at our local indie. So yes, we wound up with two copies of a disappointing book.)